The Help (2011)

The Help Synopsis

Set in Mississippi during the 1960s, The Help stars Emma Stone (star of the breakout hit, Zombieland) as Skeeter, a southern society girl who returns from college determined to become a writer, but turns her friends’ lives—and a small Mississippi town—upside down when she decides to interview the black women who have spent their lives taking care of prominent southern families. Academy Award nominee Viola Davis (“Eat Pray Love”) stars as Aibileen, Skeeter’s best friend’s housekeeper, who is the first to open up—to the dismay of her friends in the tight-knit black community. Despite Skeeter’s life-long friendships hanging in the balance, she and Aibileen continue their collaboration and soon more women come forward to tell their stories—and as it turns out, they have a lot to say. Along the way, unlikely friendships are forged and a new sisterhood emerges, but not before everyone in town has a thing or two to say themselves when they become unwittingly—and unwillingly—caught up in the changing times.

At some point or another, you’ve been mean mugged before. Whether by some bitch who is intimidated by your hotness, by some asshole who wants to step outside and throw down because he saw you making a different kind of eye at his girlfriend or maybe by your wife because you took a nap instead of going to the grocery store, you’ve been victimized by someone who has attempted to punch you in the face with their eyes.

It's May, and with June officially just a month away, MTV is preparing for their annual celebration of movies. The nominations for the 21st annual MTV Movie Awards are in, and it looks like The Hunger Games and Bridesmaids are the films to beat this year, as both scored numerous nominations. Also repeated on the list, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, The Help and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1.

Here, the Kaplans have captured Minny's irrepressible feistiness and The Help's scatalogical revenge plot in one hysterical gospel number, complete with a chipper and incredibly catchy chorus. As viral vids go, this is the total package. It's topical, deftly edited, and possesses a sense of humor that's smart yet coarse.

As I’m sure you are aware, the Academy Awards were held tonight and some of the best movies of 2011 were awarded Oscars for their achievements. But the timespan between January 1st and December 31st is a long there are new movies being released every single weekend. As a result, there’s a good chance that a) you might not have seen every title that won an award tonight and/or b) you might have missed our coverage of said title. Well, you’re in luck.

In anticipation of the Academy Awards, and perhaps as a cure for “Oscar Fever,” Conan O’Brien has been dedicating some time at the start of each episode this week to Oscar nominated films. Last night’s episode featured a segment that had Conan’s band (Jimmy Vivino and the Basic Cable Band) re-scoring War Horse.

"It's heritage, not hate." That argument doesn't really apply to The Help, which few can argue as actual hate speech, but I come back to it again in the movie's defense, trying to explain how you can be nostalgic for a period of history that's ugly and unflattering, how the intersection of white and black lives can be both fraught and sometimes terrible, but also more complicated than is easy to remember

The 2011 awards season is almost at an end. The Academy Awards are now less than a month away, set to air on February 26th, but there are still more guild awards that need to happen before then. Tonight, for example, was the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards, which delivers awards to films based on their individual performances as well as their ensemble casts. Now the show has come to a close and the awards have been handed out. And the big winner is...

I got on the phone with Taylor last week to talk about the massive success of the film, how the test screening process helped him figure out how much audiences loved the movie, and how his grandmother's horrible Christmas dessert helped make The Help authentically Southern

The same goes for Taylor, who might be wise to play the waiting game before selecting his next project. Depending on whom you trust, Taylor’s The Help could be a major player in this year’s still-developing Oscar race. And a select few Oscar trackers are saying the film’s pull could drag Taylor into the Best Director race as a result. If that’s the case, he suddenly could have his pick of a series of prestige projects, so there’s no need to jump on a film just yet.

The people have voted and the nominations for People’s Choice Awards 2012 are in. Unsurprisingly, movie fans love Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Transformers. And while Bridesmaids was recognized in numerous categories, the people seem to have disregarded Melissa McCarthy in the Favorite Female Comedy Actress.

If you need one more reason to see The Help, you needn't look any further than its popularity. By word of mouth, droves came out to see the film, winning the weekend three weeks in a row. The more people spoke about The Help’s messages and performances, the better it did. Even if The Help doesn’t end up being a film you could watch over and over again, it is certainly worth seeing at least once.

Despite a continuing high unemployment rate amongst America's laborers, ticket sales were up at the box office this Labor Day weekend compared to last year. The top ten movies of Labor Day, 2010 took in around $19 million. Today audiences are estimatedly spending an additional $21 million on the top biggest movies in theaters. The Help added the largest chunk to its total, bringing its four day weekend total close to $20 million.

Sometimes little movies with great stories that get less credit than they deserve tank at the box office. Sometimes they just barely make it. This Labor Day weekend a worthy movie that would usually get overlooked is continuing to win big.

Three of the worst movies of the summer were foisted onto movie-going audiences this weekend and, in good turn, all three made only tiny splashes at the box office. None of the newcomers could top last week's number one film, The Help. The summer underdog has slowly been building in popularity over the last few weeks and is set to cross the $100 million threshold this week.

You can always tell when the end of summer has arrived. Hollywood begins dropping off all the cinematic bombs they knew weren't going to do very well hoping that people tired of seeing major blockbusters for the umpteenth time might just buy a ticket for the sake of trying something different. But that strategy was a no go this weekend as four new comers hit screens. The sound of those suckers bombing in theaters across the country sounded something like a London air raid from World War II.

Though the bestseller bona fides make this a natural transition for Taylor, the specifics of the story are pretty different-- the story is narrated by an 11-year-old whose brother has escaped a murder trial, causing the rest of his family to hit the road to find him. As THR somewhat simplistically puts it, the book "dealt with themes of forgiveness and miracles"

Three other new releases hit screens this weekend, but none could bump Caesar and his rebellions apes from the number one spot. Rise of the Planet of the Apes swung into the triple digit club earning an additional $27 million to top $104 million.

Seeing so many bad movies come from great books, I have to think that any author would be hesitant to let their work fall into the hands of Hollywood. The Great Gatsby, considered by many to be the greatest book of all time, has been adapted three separate times and not a single one has been comparable. In some ways Kathryn Stockett took a similar risk when she sold the movie rights to her book, The Help, even before it came out, but she had one leg up

We’ve officially entered the dog days of summer. Those long ninety-degree-plus mid-afternoons where the sweating starts after lunch and ends sometime around tomorrow’s breakfast. No wonder all the big movies come out during this season. What better place to spend some time during summer than a dark, AC-aided 60 degree climate

In a movie like The Help, the term "villain" is a little tricky-- Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly Holbrook is not exactly cut and dry evil like Lord Voldemort or Captain America's Red Skull. Based on Kathryn Stockett's bestselling novel, The Help stars Stone as Skeeter Phelan

Davis, as the Oscar nominee for Doubt and a newly minted Tony winner as of last summer's set visit, was an obvious choice to be cast as Aibileen. Spencer, a character actress with roles in films like Bad Santa and Dinner for Schmucks, had a far more unusual route to playing her role

The other journalists and I spent the entire day on the set-- there's not really anything else do in Greenwood, as Viola Davis freely admitted when she said she and her husband would visit the local Wal-Mart for entertainment. Between takes we got the chance to talk to nearly all of the film's main players

Obviously the idea becomes moot if every film were to be released on a Wednesday instead of a Friday, but I still wonder why more studios aren't implementing this idea. The smaller the number of competitors and increased number of days in wide release will only help the movie in the long run. The question is whether women, the project's target audience, will have the same availability and access to the film that the out-of-school kids did with Transformers.

The Help stars Emma Stone as a young woman living in Jackson, Mississippi in 1963 who decides to pursue her dream of being a journalist by interviewing various black women in town-- including two lead characters played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer

I talked to Columbus on the phone today about the new trailer, what we saw in it and what we didn't, and the kind of reactions they've been getting to The Help as they screen it for audiences all over the world-- yes, even in France, they're digging this movie about the Jim Crow South

Amid all the superheroes and sequels that will be dominating the summer movie schedule as usual this year, there will also be The Help, an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel that hits theaters August 12. It features no robots...

I caught up with the four leads after the presentation for a quick interview and asked them about that sweat-- Howard, for one, did not hesitate to talk about exactly what kind of sweat you'll be seeing in the film. We also talked about what we can expect from the movie- and which of their co-stars they expect to totally steal the film out from under them

The Help doesn't hit theaters until next August, but Disney has gone ahead and released the first nine images from the production, which show off Stone's sandy-colored wig along with some serious 60s fashions

Production on The Help starts this summer in Mississippi and casting is almost complete, which means I can finally stop my nitpicky analysis of every choice the production makes and just wait to see if the movie turns out any good

Taylor is also a friend of Stockett's and Spencer's, which raises the question of why it took so long for him to cast her to begin with. Regardless, Spencer will at least be perfect at embodying the character she inspired

Davis is currently doing a stint on Broadway in Fences, and it's not clear when production on The Help might get started-- though I imagine everyone involved is keen to avoid shooting in Mississippi in the middle of summer

Dreamworks Studios has picked up the rights to The Help. Bestsellers can make cruel mistresses when heading toward the big screen. Expectation levels are high, high, high. You don’t want to turn a book everyone loves into the movie version of The Lovely Bones. Hopefully director Tate Taylor will do Kathryn Stockett's story some justice.